Chemists at C4X Discovery, a pharmaceutical development lab, have moved away from traditional “ball and stick” and 2D models for molecules. Instead, they’ve partnered with Epic Games, creators of popular game Fortnite, to create a new virtual reality (VR) program called 4Sight, allowing the lab’s scientists to get up close and personal with the molecules they are working with.
The key to drug development is to find the drug molecule that best fits within a targeted protein, which would then have various effects on the drug user. These molecules constantly transform, moving and reacting to stimuli, making it tough to match the correct proteins to the correct molecules. CTO and founder of C4X, Dr. Charles Blundell, told Simon Jones of Unreal Engine that correctly pairing proteins and molecules can be like finding a good dancing partner.
“The molecule has to be the right shape to grab onto its dancing partner, the target protein, and they have to move at the same time in the same ways at the same rate,” Dr. Blundell said. “Our 4Sight application, built within Unreal Engine, allows us to capture that complexity of the dance so that our chemists can understand what choice to make, and which partner is the next best one to go with.”
Other modeling methods, like the “ball and stick” structures, don’t accurately represent the behaviors and movements of molecules. However, 4Sight allows for the chemists to interact with more accurate 3D models of proteins and test out the fit of other molecules, helping the scientists chose find the molecule that does the best job. C4X uses this VR program to develop drugs with less time, errors and side effects.
“Starting to use VR was quite transformative, because all of a sudden the molecules become part of my world and I can manipulate them in space just ahead of me, like you would do comparing two oranges and two apples,” says Thorsten Nowak, a medicinal chemist at C4XD told WIRED’s Phoebe Braithwaite.
According to CNN, C4X has already had some successes with 4Sight. They’ve used the program to develop a drug to treat addiction, as well as made strides in researching potential treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s and cancer.
As C4X continues to use and refine this program, they hope to further the medical fields understanding of molecules and develop better drugs for all types of illnesses. And they’re not the only ones in the medical field benefitting from the use of VR. While C4X utilizes VR to treat diseases through medication, medical students in Alabama are getting prepared to treat sickness through surgery — by practicing with VR.
